Emergency Sanitation - Can you contribute to the Wikipedia Article?

I am a WASH engineer who loves nothing more than talking Sh*t. I am currently working to support the SuSanA Working Groups and enhance SuSanA as a tool that can benefit and support members working around the world.

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Emergency Sanitation - Can you contribute to the Wikipedia Article?

As you may be aware the SuSanA community has been working on improving the WASH knowledge available through Wikipedia as a result there have been a number of new articles launched, one of these is for
Emergency Sanitation
.

I would like to appeal to the SuSanA community to enhance the article and contribute your knowledge to improving the resource. This does not have to be text you can add references and images too.

If you want to contribute but need help, then please feel free to respond to this post and either Elisabeth or I will get in touch.

Re: Emergency Sanitation - Can you contribute to the Wikipedia Article?

I added a few smaller things. Did you have something specific in mind that needs to be added? For a rather general page/topic the existing page (while short) seems not too bad. Adding individual technology options is maybe too much for such a wiki page?

Krischan Makowka
Microbiologist & emergency WASH specialist

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eshaylor

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I am a WASH engineer who loves nothing more than talking Sh*t. I am currently working to support the SuSanA Working Groups and enhance SuSanA as a tool that can benefit and support members working around the world.

Posts: 47

Karma: 4

Likes received: 27

Re: Emergency Sanitation - Can you contribute to the Wikipedia Article?

I had wondered about a paragraph for each stage of technologies, i.e. starting with trenches and the key goals of vector control with trenches then moving onto communal toilets etc and the challenges for each. I also wanted to explain the links with cholera outbreaks and other diseases and the need for sanitation to contain these.

I see the article as covering the questions you get asked at a dinner party when people find out what you do, most people dont understand the challenges of containing shit on mass when resources are limited. They also dont really understand the links between sanitation and disease outbreaks. I agree what is there so far is good and if we put too much technical details it will be just like the chapter from Engineering in Emergencies, but maybe a bit more on the normal questions people ask?

Re: Emergency Sanitation - Can you contribute to the Wikipedia Article?

It's always exciting to have a new Wikipedia article go online, so I am really happy that we now have one for emergency sanitation, thanks to Cranfield student Yafeti Yamikani (with some assistance by me).
Here is the link:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_sanitation

And it's super to be using the Forum and the Working Group 8 members to work on adding more content to the article.

Thanks to Kris and to those who have responded to Esther's e-mail so far!

I see you have added some further points to the challenges. Are you able to substantiate your statements by adding a particular reference? Or perhaps they are kind of "common knowledge" amongst emergency WASH people so it's hard to add a reference. For now I have added "citation needed" to the article.
But perhaps the existing references do include this information?
So far we have cited these ones (= the same ones which I had also identified as key documents here:
forum.susana.org/67-challenging-environm...ns-resilience-issues
)

Are there others that you could add at the same time as adding a key statement from them?

Technologies

Regarding an explanation of technologies: well the good thing is that so many technology already have their own Wikipedia articles. Therefore, we just have to link to those and not explain them again. For example the article on pit latrines, or container-based sanitation.

So far, we have this information about technologies (each of the items are linked to the respective Wikipedia articles):

In the immediate emergency phase, the focus is on managing open defecation, and toilet technologies might include very basic latrines, pit latrines, bucket toilets, container-based toilets, chemical toilets. The short term phase might also involve technologies such as urine-diverting dry toilets, septic tanks, decentralized wastewater systems.

There is actually a Wikipedia article on latrines, which could be beefed up and then linked to for the technologies section:

Which other technologies should be mentioned? Which of those don't have their own Wikipedia articles yet?

Linking from and to other articles

Another thing is that Wikipedia needs to be understood as a "web" of knowledge in itself. This means, we also have to ask ourselves:Which other Wikipedia articles should now link to this article?

E.g. today I went to the articles in Wikipedia about emergency, emergency management, natural disasters and tried to insert suitable wiki-links to the topic of "emergency sanitation". But more needs to be done in that respect. This would help to ensure that people who're looking up information on emergency issues do also learn about the importance of sanitation at the same time!

Regarding Esther's point:

They also dont really understand the links between sanitation and disease outbreaks.

it's true we could strengthen that a bit in the article, although keeping in mind that a heap of information about lack of sanitation and public health is in the Wikipedia article on sanitation.
Mind you, perhaps we can add more information here about specific public health issues in emergencies, e.g. higher risks of cholera. Risks that come from decomposing dead bodies of people or animals in stagnant water or alike (I am no expert on this).

Re: Emergency Sanitation - Can you contribute to the Wikipedia Article?

A warm welcome to you in Japan! We hear very little from Japanese contributors on the forum here, so I am glad that you have found us! (We only have 17 SuSanA members in Japan. Is that mainly due to language barrier?)

Could you tell us more about these make-shift toilets used during trail running races? What is in the tents exactly, it looks like simple bucket toilets? With or without urine diversion? How do you manage that the buckets get emptied in time before they overflow?

Have you installed your tent toilets during any emergencies yet?

Would you like to add one of your photos to the Wikipedia article on emergency sanitation?:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_sanitation
This can easily be done if they are your photos and you are willing to share them under and open access licence.

Re: Emergency Sanitation - Can you contribute to the Wikipedia Article?

Dear Elizabeth, Thank you so much for welcoming me. I do not understand why Japanese members are few. However, I have been interested in SUSANA's activities for several years. The wall of words is my personal poor English ability. I do not like to ask other people to translate. I recently got a Google translation, so I am having fun using it. very impressive.

I will answer your question. , The name of this toilet is "PAIL TOILET KIT". After several years of the Great Hanshin Earthquake that occurred in 1995, I developed it.
At first it is to prepare for the next major earthquake, but we also use it for the trail running race to protect the mountain environment. We also use it at the Antarctic observation team in Japan and Belgium Base for environmental conservation in Antarctica.

This toilet is devised for emergency in the event of a disaster, so it needs to be handled quickly and easily. It does not require mechanical technology or bacterial treatment, basically manages it with our own power. Regulations in disaster areas in Japan, you need to do your own thing.

This toilet kit is provided only as a toilet. For that reason, excrement collected in bags has been developed as a "REVERSER" special instrument for sewage to sewer manholes and flush toilets. In the event of a disaster, we can not use the water service, so we solidify it with coagulant and incinerate it.

Re: Emergency Sanitation - Can you contribute to the Wikipedia Article?

Thanks for your forum post and I agree with you: Google Translate is awesome! I am very happy that you found it.

I still don't fully understand how these toilets work. Is there a flyer or website link which you could provide? Some schematics?

Regarding photos, if you would like to make them available for Wikipedia articles, here is what you have to do: Please put them into a dropbox folder (or other file sharing website, e.g. Google Drive), send me the link and I could grab them from there. I would then upload them to the SuSanA flickr photo database, and from there they get into the Wikimedia Commons photos repository of Wikipedia from where they can be shared further. For each photo there should also be a good caption to describe what can be seen and who took the photo (this you could send to me separately in a Word document, or give the files detailed file names).